DATE=9/20/1999 TYPE=BACKGROUNDER TITLE=U-S / NORTH KOREA NUMBER=5-44286 BYLINE=JIM RANDLE DATELINE=PENTAGON CONTENT= VOICED AT: INTRO: Some experts in Asian politics and Members of Congress say they think Washington made a mistake in offering to drop economic sanctions against North Korea in exchange for a North Korean promise to stop missile tests. But V-O-A's Jim Randle reports, other analysts say the only way to promote change in North Korea is to have more contacts with the isolated, impoverished, Communist regime. Text: North Korea alarmed Japan, South Korea, and the United States when it fired a ballistic missile across Japan that traveled far out into the Pacific last year. A recent Central Intelligence Agency report said Pyongyang was poised to fire an even more powerful weapon `at any time.' The report said the new missile could probably carry a crude nuclear weapon as far as the U-S states of Alaska or Hawaii. President Clinton's Special Advisor on North Korea, former Defense Secretary William Perry, has been talking to North Korea and reviewing U-S policy toward Pyongyang for months. He says his new agreement is a wise and careful step toward normalizing diplomatic and trade relations between the two nations. But Charles Horner, of the Hudson Institute, a private group that researches strategic issues, says there is reason to be `highly skeptical' of this deal because Pyongyang may have violated an earlier agreement to stop nuclear weapons development. Mr. Horner says North Korea is the regime that kept pouring resources into weapons development even during a famine that killed thousands of North Korean citizens. He says such habitually belligerent leaders will not give up weapons lightly. /// Horner Act // And yet we find that even a period of severe domestic problems, where there have been famine and reports of horrendous losses to famine and all kinds of incapacities there with people fleeing the country, even to China, that the North Korean regime continues to be threatening and hostile to its neighbors, not particularly conciliatory. Latest round of problems with the South Koreans, trying to disrupt what had been a kind of de facto understanding of maritime borders, threats to launch missile tests, things of that kind. So we have to greet with some skepticism claims that this particular charm is going to be the one that works. /// end act /// The Cato Institute's Director of Defense studies, Ivan Eland, says ending economic sanctions against North Korea has the unfortunate effect of rewarding Pyongyang for developing missiles. But he says the sanctions policy that the deal ends was an even bigger mistake. /// Eland act /// We should have pulled (ended) the sanctions a long time ago. To try to get as much Western influence into Korea as we possibly can. And we are doing the opposite. We are isolating them and we are making it easier for them to shut their people off from Western ideas. /// end act /// The University of Georgia's Professor Han Park is an expert in Korean politics and says the deal dropping sanctions in exchange for ending missile tests is a `terrific idea.' He says it gives Pyongyang an alternative to developing, building, and exporting missiles. /// Park Act /// In fact, (missile exports are) the only source of foreign currency earning. And given the economy, especially, in the area of food shortages, and medical supply shortages. It is very important for them (the North Koreans) to continuously to generate foreign currency. They don't have any other avenue. Not producing, not proliferating these weapons, especially missiles, would mean that they would have to suffer economically. /// end act /// Professor Park says greater contacts with North Korea are the only way of inducing any reform or change in the world's most isolated nation. He says ending some sanctions is a step in the right direction. (Signed). NEB/JR/LTD/JP 20-Sep-1999 12:18 PM EDT (20-Sep-1999 1618 UTC) NNNN Source: Voice of America .